


Choose a Path and Follow it

by NeverComingHome



Category: The Hours (2002), The Hours - Michael Cunningham
Genre: F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-08
Updated: 2015-03-08
Packaged: 2018-03-17 00:34:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3508502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NeverComingHome/pseuds/NeverComingHome
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A life of Love</p>
            </blockquote>





	Choose a Path and Follow it

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a fandomaid auction

Sally did an interview with a potential talk show host about the power of words. An “I love you” could make up for six hours spent in a hospital waiting room, or getting out of a nice warm bed to pick up a drenched, hysterical, teenager who yelled it over the sound of thunder as they got into the car. Three words could be all someone had to wake up the next morning, put down the bottle, or suck it up and give the best damn speech ever.

“He thinks by saying ‘I love you’ once a day to one person, you’ll learn to appreciate it; it stops being this phrase people throw around. I don’t know, think it’s a crock?”

Clarissa was halfway to dreaming, but managed something muffled that was almost close enough. Sally reached over her to turn out the bedside lamp.

“I love you.”

~*~  
Richard was weeks from relapsing, on wonderful blue and white capsules he could manage on his own. Sally had flowers delivered to him along with a congratulations for his Carruthers' nomination. He’d laughed at them, stuck the pot behind his couch.

“It’s still a big deal.”

“They put tons of people on that list, it doesn’t mean anything.”

“Or,” she said while reaching behind him, “it could mean they love your work like I love it and you.”

“So why didn’t you buy the flowers yourself?”

She started to answer and he laughed, told her it didn’t matter, and took the pot from her. She saw it on the window sill when she left. Sally arrived home to find her staring into the sink, washing tomatoes as if it was only an excuse to do something with her hands. She touched the small of her back, causing Clarissa to start and drop the fruit into the strainer.

“He didn’t like them, did he?”

“No, no, he liked the flowers.” She turned off the water and added, “Just not the thought.”

“Isn’t that what counts?”

Clarissa did not blurt or improvise. If she was impulsive she would have told Sally she didn’t know anything at all if that’s what she thought. Richard was sick, he didn’t deserve any sort of backhanded comment on how his mind rationalized things. He knew (thought, was told by voices with no faces) that it would never be about him getting better, the flowers were for a trophy he might not live to see if the pills didn’t work.

“Ack, that’s the station.” She put her phone away. “I’ll probably be late again. I love you.”

“Mhm.”

~*~  
He’d been serenading their window for a little over a week when Clarissa first wondered if Sally was cheating.  She went to sleep to the mockingbird’s song and could only imagine how it kept up Sally, a lighter sleeper than herself. She tried the usual recordings of other males to scare him off (not having the heart to spray him with a squirt bottle), but to no avail. Each night she’d hear his call, promise herself she’d talk to Sally about doing something in the morning, then fall asleep and forget all about it. 

Then one night he stopped.

“It appears our little friend has moved on to greener pastures.”

Sally didn’t look up from the script, “What little friend?”

“The bird.” No response. “The bird who’s been pecking and singing at our window every night?" Still nothing. "He starts up right around the time you usually get home. I could’ve sworn you’d-”

“Oh, right, the bird. Noisy little guy. I noticed a couple nights ago I didn’t hear him.”

Clarissa felt a hiccup of emotion, what emotion she wasn’t sure. Betrayal? Sadness? Acknowledgment of something she thought she knew? Maybe work had been hectic and she was staying late, but Clarissa didn’t know because she couldn’t remember the last time they’d had an extended conversation on either of their jobs. Maybe Sally came home and fell into a deep, dreamless sleep without any regards to late night chirping. Maybe Clarissa didn’t know her partner as well as she thought she did.

Or maybe Sally didn’t hear the bird because she slipped in when the sun was coming up instead of going down.

“Excuse me, is this yours?”

“Oh my god, I love you.” Clarissa took back her wallet, one hand on the shopping cart to keep it from drifting down the hill. “I didn’t even notice it fell out.”

“I figured,” they laughed.

“Thank you so much.” She pressed it to her chest and waved at the stranger as they jogged back to their own car.

~*~  
She kissed him on a beach once. They’d been young and thought that because they knew they didn’t have it all figured out, they had it all figured out. He asked her if the ocean wasn’t really just one big baptismal pool and God was Earth, waiting for them to return to it. She loved how he could turn a walk into a journey and a conversation about whether or not it was cool enough to swim into a conversation about how “God bless” was a sort of religious brainwashing or something like that. 

“Bless you.” Clarissa sneezed again. “ Gesundheit.” Again. “I’m running out of languages here, hon, tissue?”

“I’m sorry. Thank you.” 

“What am I here for.”

 “The day before my interview with a new editorial company and I come down with the flu from hell.” She sniffed. “Figures.”

“If it helps, I’m on my way to screen pilots that could probably use a good editor, red nose or not. I’m sure you’ll…blow them away.”

Clarissa attempted a laugh which quickly turned into a coughing fit. Sally lead her to the easy chair and knelt, draping a blanket over Clarissa’s knees and taking the cap from her head to pull it securely over her lover’s ears. She had to leave soon, but turned on the radio while she went into the kitchen to pre-make soup and fill a flower basket with cold medicine, teabags, tissues, and other odds and ends. She set it and one of the bowls on a tray to deposit next to Clarissa who smiled at it, then her.

“You take such good care of me.”

“And here I thought I was phoning it in half the time.”

“No,” Clarissa lifted her hand from beneath the blanket to un-tuck a strand of hair so it fell between Sally’s eyes, “you’re a saint.”

“A saint who has to leave in less than five minutes.”

“Do you?”

She kissed Sally in a library once when she was old enough to know better and Sally was old enough not to care. Sally was rational and sarcastic in a way that inexplicably never approached condescending. She listened to Clarissa speak words about literature that came out of Richard’s mouth first and responded with, ‘Books are cool’ because she’d been too busy wondering when Clarissa would start speaking about herself. Sally understood things, but never felt the desire to pick them apart until the weight of the knowledge became a burden. She never talked herself into a cold silence and instead filled it with jokes, stories or dancing around a vacuum cleaner to the sound of the band across the street. 

“I’ll call you,” she kissed the palm of Clarissa’s hand, “every hour, I promise.”

“Love you.” Clarissa rasped when Sally propped her legs on the ottoman and started towards the door.

“Ditto.”

~*~  
Clarissa kissed Sally and Richard was dead. Her mind knew the two things were not related, but her heart felt like they were. When she wasn’t with Richard everything she did took away from the moments shared with him, like she was cheating. One relationship made of the things that mattered, one made with the things that were not supposed to, and life had chosen which remained. Kissing Sally was like choosing Sally which she never considered an option, because a life without Richard wasn’t an option. 

She kissed Sally and let herself lose him, touch by touch. She hovered above her and left memories between her breasts, sighs on the tops of her legs, gentle nips at her lower lip, the taste of a mouth that was used to yell at him before he fell.

“Look at me.”

Sally kissed her firmly enough for her to feel through her grief. She canted her hips upward and moaned, goose bumped skin sliding across Clarissa’s with each movement. Their tongues met, Clarissa turned and thrust her fingers then broke the kiss to hear Sally’s response, true as the day had been long. The last time they did this was before Richard’s last relapse. In the day to day it seemed unimportant; lust, ‘nooners’, the whole thing was more than a little uncivilized, unnecessary. She forgot it wasn’t always about the drive, sometimes the scenery played a part. 

“Mom? Did you hear me?”

Clarissa nodded, draining the last of her water, “Goodnight, love you too.”

Ignoring the glass, Julia wrapped her arms around Clarissa, “It’s gonna be okay.”

“I know sweetie,” she said, even though she didn’t.

~*~  
“Do you remember when I was working non-stop?”

“So, yesterday?”

Sally rolls her eyes, “I mean before Richard...” 

“Before Richard what?” Clarissa prompts.

“Before he won the Carruthers'. You and him were obsessed with that book, the ‘day in the life’ story.”

“What about it?”

“I've been working on a pilot and I'm going to talk to my boss about me directing it.”

“You? Directing?”

“I’ll be able to make my own hours instead of being the station’s 9-1-1, at least until it’s finished. I figured it’d get my foot in the door and give us more time together.”

Clarissa told her it was great, taking her key out of the lock to lean against the door and pull Sally against her. 

“The presentation will go perfectly.”

“Sure or he’ll hate the story, think I'm trying to quit, and it'll wind up as an unmitigated disaster. Let’s go with yours.”

“The presentation will go perfectly,” Clarissa rubs her sides and Sally laughs, pulling away from the tickle.

“Wish me luck.”

“Good luck, I love you!”

~*~  
Clarissa throws her a party when the mini series turns out to be a success in the circles that matter. There are no tears, open windows, or philosophical discussions on what constitutes ‘the small things’. There is only Sally looking at Clarissa and feeling for all the world like she should thank her, not knowing why. 


End file.
